David Michael Miller
Helena White has seen firsthand the ripple effects of hunger in a classroom.
“When you’re hungry, you can’t think of anything else — you can’t function without food,” says White, a speech and language clinician at East High School. “If they’re acting out because they’re hungry, it can disrupt the whole class.”
To combat the growing issue of child hunger, East High will officially open a food pantry on Monday. Named “Food for Thought,” it is the school district’s first food pantry. It will serve as a student club facilitated by White.
The need is real. At East, more than 55% of the 1,700 students qualify for free or reduced lunch programs. “We rank 16th out of more than 500 schools statewide for students who need lunch assistance,” says East principal Michael Hernandez. The state average for students needing lunch assistance, he says, is 36%.
East also faces the challenge of a relatively large homeless student population.
Since September, the district’s Transition Education Program, which provides services for homeless students, has identified 114 homeless students — or almost 7% of the school — who attend East. Homeless students are defined as those who are living on the street, in shelters, cars, are awaiting foster care or are in transitional housing.
The Food for Thought pantry won’t be just a grab-and-go snack shop for individual students. “It’s designed for students to take the food back to wherever they’re staying and share it with family,” says White.
While the pantry officially opens next week, it has been operating for a few weeks now. In a small 8-by-10-foot room on the school’s second floor, a couple of large metal racks hold an assortment of canned fruits and veggies, as well as rice, soups, cereal, granola and fruit bars, macaroni and cheese, and easy-to-make meals like Hamburger Helper.
“Some students are living in a motel where they only have access to a microwave,” says White, as she points out individual servings of pasta and ramen noodles stored in large bins in the pantry’s lower racks. “Students love the canned fruit and fruit cups — it’s immediate, they don’t have to cook it and can just eat it right away.”
In serving its unique population, the Food for Thought pantry faces another challenge: ensuring student users’ anonymity.
“There are lots of social pressures in high school to have nice clothes and shoes and all that,” says White. “And we want [students using the pantry] to keep their dignity.”
So, they’ve devised a plan. Students who are identified as in need by teachers or come to White seeking food will go with her into the closed pantry. Once inside, the student will fill a nondescript backpack with the food they need and leave to be lost in the sea of fellow students with their book-filled backpacks.
“Just looking at some of the students, you would never guess that they’re homeless,” says White. “It’s not obvious who needs help, and we want it to stay that way.”
The students who use the pantry already are very appreciative. “It’s very sweet the way they come in and get things they know their families like,” she says, adding that students have told her things like “My dad really liked the pasta” or “My sister ate all the chicken noodle soup, so we need more.”
White is glad to help. “It’s extremely gratifying to fill up a backpack full of food and send it home with students,” she says.
About a dozen students have signed up for the Food for Thought club, White says. The members will spend time stocking the pantry, sorting donations, organizing food drives and promoting the pantry to other students. “They’re helping sustain something that not only helps themselves, but it helps others too,” she says.
Before the pantry was created, teachers and other school workers would individually help out students in need. “Staff would purchase food, put it in a backpack and send it home with the kids,” says Principal Hernandez. “This is nothing new; we’ve known there’s a need.”
Hernandez keeps a stock of snacks for students. “They come into my office and know where the food is,” he says, pulling out bags of granola bars and crackers from a cabinet. “They point to it, I give them a nod, they grab what they need and go.”
The pantry, Hernandez says, is “an opportunity to help put everyone on an even playing field” and adds that the program folds into the school’s mission of “getting East to become the center of the community where if you need help, you can come here.”
The school also has a clothing pantry on site.
Hernandez says before pursuing the pantry idea, he and others at the school brought it up to students to see if there would be any negative impact as far as students teasing others who might use the service and to gauge interest. He says they responded with empathy. “They said they would understand it’s important,” he said. “They told us, ‘If you’re hungry, you’ve got to eat.’”
The East food pantry is a step in the right direction, says Andy Czerkas, co-director of The River Food Pantry, 2201 Darwin Road, which serves more residents of Dane County than any other pantry.
“This is one more way to attack the problem [of hunger],” he says. “The mere fact that people felt it was necessary to start this facility speaks to the need. Anything that displays the need that exists in our community is positive.”